Steam Family Sharing beta opens up, allows game sharing with 10 people

Remember back when Microsoft was the big evil company for planning to force Xbox One users into a crazy world that allowed you to share games with friends and family, and the Internet rose up as one and demanded that they reverse the policy? Meet the Steam Family Sharing beta, a really cool system for doing the exact same thing that everyone will love.

Steam Family Sharing was hinted at a little while ago, but now the beta for the program is officially live, and we can see what it is all about. Users will be able to target specific games as titles they are interested in sharing, and a group of up to ten friends and family members will be able to play those games on their own computers while earning their own Steam achievements and saving their own game progress to the Steam cloud. Valve plans to roll this service out to the first 1,000 people who join their beta group on Steam, and eventually roll the feature out to the rest of the platform. There are not many details available yet; only that once the primary user has authorized a friend’s computer, that friend will have access to the games the users has allowed to be shared.

There’s potential for this to be a really exciting service. The idea behind shared games eliminated the traditional tired demo system. Users will have the ability to play a game and earn achievements, such that when they purchase the game for themselves they will be able to pick up from where they left off and keep playing as though nothing had changed. It’s a great move on Valve’s part, and a step closer to the Steam Box becoming the perfect living room console for many users. Check out the group if you’re interested in participating, and stay tuned for some hands-on time with this new feature.